Viewing: Psychology

Time speeds up as you grow older. I thought it was just another thing adults complained about when I was young, but now I know better. Days have begun to fly by, weeks gone before I know it, and years aren’t the glacial stretches of seasons they once were.

From the moment I heard this story I loved it, the suddenness of it, like a flick of a knife, the ending so curt it leaves the mind reeling. The meaning, the moral, is not tied up nicely, but left to sink into you, slowly

We literally feel our hearts, how they react to what we love or fear or lose. And this is where the separate lines representing the physical heart (the hollow muscle expanding and collapsing in our chests) and the metaphorical heart (the emotional and spiritual associations) begin to waver and weave…

Staring out into the endless blue water of the Pacific can be both alluring and frightening, especially when I remember that humankind descended from ancient creatures who managed to survive and evolve in that salty, fluxing, fierce, and deep expanse.

In this world of unforeseeable happenings, our species, since its inception, has been on an endless quest to explain, cajole, and pray our way into feeling a sense of power over our fate. Superstitions, in particular, shine light on this psychological need for control, as we create dangers that are clearly defined and easily counteracted through various charms and precautions.

It’s been almost three years since I graduated from college and my partner and I sold nearly all our belongings. It wasn’t easy at first to let go of the furniture, kitchen appliances, and random doodads and trinkets that somehow always manage to accumulate when you live in one place for a while. But the giving up of stuff made room for something better: unfettered travel.

When I first tell people that I don’t have a phone they respond initially with a blank stare, followed by a series of quick questions, as if my lack of phone results from some possible mental defect or extremist ideology.

Today there is a precious and momentary balance in which the day and night are equal in duration, held in shimmering equilibrium before the daylight begins it’s seasonal dominance and the night recedes more and more of it’s allotted time until the summer solstice.

Phenomenology provides a valuable foundation for those of us longing to reconnect with the more-than-human world by asking us to set aside our predetermined notions of what is, and what is possible, in order to encounter the more primal world that exists beneath human society and the ideologies inherent to it. Our sensory experience unfurls before us an ecological world filled with awareness, creativity, and wonder; a world that is constantly new every moment.

Winter is the period of gestation, when life is hibernating beneath the earth, awaiting the renewal of growth with the sun’s increasing energy in the spring. Psychologically, this is the time when outwardly our life feels barren or deathly quiet, no creative fire or vibrant feeling disrupting the lull. But deep within the darkest parts of our psyche, in the realm of the subconscious, a seed is being carefully incubated for the moment when life is ready to begin anew.